How to Unlock Revenue Growth with Jobs to Be Done: A Step-by-Step Guide to JTBD Switch Interviews

One of the most frustrating aspects of running a business is trying to work out why your customers don’t spend as much with your business as they do elsewhere. We were getting 9.2/10 ratings from our customers, but for some reason our revenues were flat, and it drove me crazy trying to work out why.

Eventually, I discovered Jobs to Be Done Interviews, and learned how to really understand what customers want. This article introduces you to the method we use to understand customer needs; Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) Switch Interviews. This approach allowed me to grow sales by over 10x in a year, and this article will show you how to apply the technique in your business.

What Is the Jobs to Be Done Framework?

Jobs to Be Done is a marketing framework/theory developed by the late Clay Christensen, with inputs from Bob Moesta and Tony Ulwick. The core concept is that people do not buy products for the sake of it, they are trying to get a “job done” and they are “hiring” your product to help them.

The outcome driven innovation approach to JTBD

Tony Ulwick’s approach is called Outcome Driven Innovation. His approach focuses heavily on quantitative surveys of customers to understand the outcomes they hire the product for. It uses “Desired Outcome Statements” that can be put into a survey and ranked by how important each outcome is, and how satisfied customers are with this outcome today.

If you would like to know more about how it works and how to apply it (including using AI prompts to expedite the research) I highly recommend Mike Boysen’s Masterclass – it is a comprehensive resource on the ODI approach

The switch interview approach to JTBD

Bob Moesta’s approach focuses on JTBD Switch Interviews. In order to understand why customers buy a product or service, we need to interview them. Rather than asking about what people might buy, the focus here is on customers that have bought a product or service.

The “switch” is about the trigger moment when a person moves from being a potential customer to being a real customer, spending their money. This is important, because real money is involved, and people usually have to give something up “tradeoff” to make a purchase. These tradeoffs will help us find revenue growth in a later step of the process.

Jobs To Be Done Switch Interviews are the focus of this article, as Bob was kind enough to teach me how these work. At a high level:

Customers buy a product or service to help them make progress in their lives (toward an outcome)
If we interview customers that have made a purchase we can work backwards, asking questions to understand why they bought the product
More importantly, we can understand what they bought, when they bought it, where they made the purchase, how they shopped and made the decision, and how much they spent

Once we have interviewed enough people about their purchase (typically 12 interviews is enough for any given product), we are able to unpack the reasons why they made their decision, and then redesign our Product, Positioning, Placement and Pricing to better meet real customer needs. Read on to find out how.

Jobs to Be Done Interviews: The Forces of Progress template

When running these interviews, we are listening out for what Bob calls “the forces of progress”. Nobody buys your product randomly – there is always something that has caused them to open their wallet and spend cash at that point in time. There are also factors at play that slowed them down when making the purchase – why didn’t they open their wallet yesterday? The forces of progress are used to map this out:

The Push - what triggers change?

No one buys anything unless there’s a reason. Something happens to your customer that pushes them out of their status quo and causes them to begin looking for a solution to their problem.

A simple example would be buying new clothes. If you have a full wardrobe, you are very unlikely to want to buy more clothes (unless you’re like my wife). However if you suddenly can’t fit your jeans anymore (like me), this will push you to go and find something to wear to make that problem go away.

In this case, a “button pop” moment is the push that causes you to start looking for a solution to your problem
The Push statements are always phrased this way: “When I…” – backward looking statements that describe the context or situation the customer is in when they begin needing a new way
In this example, “When I am hungry” would be Push force we record to explain why someone started their hunt for lunch

Getting lunch is a pretty simple example, and in a B2C or B2B setting these Push forces are often more complicated. Here are a few statements from a recent Jobs to Be Done interview I did about a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) that hired a cybersecurity firm to assess their compliance to a specific industry benchmark:

When other CISOs are getting prosecuted and I don’t feel comfortable with my neck on the line
When we think we have low maturity and have no staff working full time on cyber requirements
When I want to double my budget and have a 3 month deadline to get a report together to prove the need for this funding increase
When we need an independent 3rd party to deepen the business case and prove we need more money
When we lack the manpower to produce this report in the timeframe set

As you can see from this example, the Pushes trigger a need to change. This CISO sees a peer being prosecuted and thinks “I don’t want that to happen to me”. They look at their in-house team and feel worried that their own company is as leaky as a sieve. They want to double the budget to plug these security holes, and need a report to persuade the Board that this budget increase makes sense – from an independent 3rd party.

The Pull - what drew them toward the Product or Service?

Just because you’re in a spot of bother (like our CISO above) does not mean you will act on this. Many people struggle with problems like being overweight, in pain, or out-of-shape for years without spending money on a solution. This is because they need a PULL – something they are lured towards that promises to overcome this struggle and solve the problem.

In our weight-loss example, the Pushes tell us we need to lose weight (e.g. “When I can no longer fit into my jeans”) but unless we are lured toward a solution, we won’t do anything. When struggling, people are open to your marketing messages and suddenly pay attention to adverts they previously scrolled right by. Perhaps they see an ad for “Weight loss pills” and these seem alluring because they’ll help me fit my jeans without having to change my diet.

In this case, not having to give up my favourite foods is the pull that lures me toward this solution
The Pull is always phrased this way “So I can…” – forward looking statements that describe the outcome I want to achieve
In this example “So I can fit into my jeans again without having to give up the foods I love” could be the Pull force we record to explain why the diet pills were purchased

In a B2B setting, these also end up more complicated. Going back to the Jobs to Be Done interview with the Chief Information Security Officer, here are some example Pull force statements:

So I can get a report linked to an industry benchmark to show our cybersecurity maturity is lacking
So I can get a vendor who is available at short notice that will help us meet our internal timeframes
So I can trust this vendor knows the space and will align to the NIST industry benchmark
So we can move faster because they have scripts and more hands to get this done quicker
So we can prove there’s a need to double the budget

As you can see, they are lured toward their chosen vendor for a few key reasons. First, they get a report linked to a benchmark that is used in this industry – something to increase trust and credibility that there is a problem to solve. Next, they need this FAST – so having someone with people who can start tomorrow, who understand the framework and have scripts and staff to do the work is a massive draw. Finally, the “ultimate” reason why they buy the solution is to prove there is a need to double the budget and get that funding approved.

Anxieties - why we buy less stuff

Unfortunately, the fact there are Pushes and Pulls that create a compelling case for change is not the end of the story. People are generally resistant to change – and Anxieties are part of the reason why.

You can think of Anxieties as being the angel on your shoulder when making a purchase that is telling you not to do it. They are the voice of doubt in the back of your head, and they’re always framed as questions your inner voice is asking you.

In the weight-loss example, before buying Weight loss pills, that nagging voice might ask questions like:

Are these safe to take?
Will these interfere with my other medications?
Will this work or is this snake-oil?

In a B2B setting the anxieties are even more important. We know from research that up to 60% of B2B deals end in no decision. Given you have a large team buying (especially with big purchases), you get many voices of doubt that are preventing you making a sale. In our CISO example, here were some of these Anxieties:

Is this sales person fobbing me off?
Can they do this before the deadline we have set?
Are they going to pad out the work or just give me what I need?
Do they understand what we have asked for?

The good news is that once we identify these anxieties, we can design products, services and sales processes that reduce anxiety and increase sales. More on this later.

Habits - why we are reluctant to give up what we know

Habits prevent us from making progress. They are the familiar routines and behaviours that we are used to. These could be workarounds or other sub-optimal solutions to the struggle we face, but because we are used to doing them, they feel less risky than spending money on a new solution.

In our weight loss example, we could have the Push of “When my favourite jeans no longer fit” but the Habit preventing change is “I have a pair of stretchy pants that are comfortable enough to wear out”. Sure, they’re not as nice as my jeans, but they are good enough and I’ll put up with this solution if it means I don’t have to make a risky purchase and try something new.

In our CISO example, the Habit they had to give up was:

I could create a NIST benchmarking report in-house

In this case, this habit was weak. The CISO could have put it together, but the need for a 3rd party, independent consultant and the need to move fast helped them overcome the habit and make progress.

Download the Forces of Progress Template here

Before learning how to run Jobs to Be Done Interviews, you’ll need a template to capture your findings. You can download our example template using this link.

As you listen to some of the examples below, practice filling in the template when you think you hear a Push, Pull, Anxiety or Habit from an interviewee.

Jobs to Be Done Interviews: The Timeline of Progress template

In order to understand why your customers buy, you also need to understand the timeline of progress. It is very unlikely that a customer wakes up one day and experiences all of the Forces of Progress immediately. In B2C settings, customers can experience these quite quickly, whereas in B2B sales processes, sometimes the story plays out over many years.

The Timeline of Progress is a tool that lets you map out the process your customers use to buy from you. In every purchase decision:

There is a “first thought” or trigger point that causes someone to enter the market and start learning about and looking for a solution (think of this as the “First Push”). At this point the person is now aware of marketing messages, but not yet ready to buy anything.
Another Push happens, and they begin to Passively Look for solution. In this phase, they are not putting a lot of effort in to finding a solution, but they will consume marketing messages from potential suppliers and talk about their needs with friends and peers – word of mouth is strong here.
As the situation builds up pressure, another Push tips the person into “Active Looking”. This phase is where they’ll start Googling for options or researching solutions using ChatGPT or comparison sites. They need a solution at this point and are trying to build a list of vendors to choose from.
Finally, the last Push happens which triggers a decision. At this moment on the timeline you learn what they are willing to give up to buy a solution. Do they spend as much as possible or do they buy the cheapest option? Do they want it fast or will they wait? Which features do they give up on when they buy their preferred option?
Once they have purchased, you then get the final phase – looking back. Did the product or service do what they thought it would do? Are they happy? If not, why not?

This template is really useful for capturing insights as you interview someone. By mapping the decision to these different trigger points, you can ensure you have captured the whole story and not missed some important angle.

A step-by-step Guide to Jobs to Be Done Interviews

In order to run a Jobs to Be Done Interview you’ll need a plan. Fortunately, these are much less rehearsed and prepared than many other qualitative interviews. You do not need a massive list of questions to run these interviews, in fact, your goal is to answer one question:

What causes someone to say "Today's the day I buy a [new product/service]?

— Find out why they buy, and why they buy now.

A high-level overview of the process is as follows:

Set the scope of your research – what product/service are you studying?
Consider whether to expand this scope – what else might people buy to achieve the same outcome? (e.g. if I need to send out a lot of marketing material, I could hire an intern OR I could hire a Marketing Automation SaaS product)
Recruit 12-15 people who have purchased something recently (more on this below)
Interview each for ~60 minutes to unpack why they bought the product
Record and analyse the results

Let’s break this down further and walk through each step with a real example:

How do I set the scope for a Jobs to Be Done Research Study?

The scope tells us:

Which products/services we will include in our research?
- Will we only interview your existing customers, or will we also interview competitors’ customers?
- If your concept is new, what are people buying to “scratch this itch” today?
- If we are in a tight niche and might struggle to recruit enough people, can we expand the scope and still get good results?
Which location(s) will we include in our research?
- Do we only interview people in your home markets, or can we learn something useful from people overseas or in a different state?
- Which language do they speak, and can we reliably interview these customers and get the right level of insights?
Who are we targeting? What is their job title or profile and how will we find them?

By locking down the right scope we can build a research plan that will deliver results. I will typically spend a few days to a week on this phase, trying to ensure we have the right viewpoint to get the insights we need.

How do I recruit Customers for Jobs to Be Done Interviews

You have three main sources of potential interviewees for Jobs to Be Done Interviews:

Your existing customers, or prospects that you know have purchased from a competitor
Your friends/family or social media connections; and
Interview panels from sites like userinterviews.com and respondent.io

There are pros and cons for each choice, which I’ll go through below:

Interviews with existing customers

The benefit of interviewing existing customers or your competitor’s customers is simple: this insight is the most valuable, targeted information you can get about your market.

The drawbacks to interviewing existing customers can be:

If you’re doing the interviews yourself, the customer might not be as open as they would with a third party
It can be hard and expensive to recruit customers that DO NOT like your service (or who have churned), meaning you miss out on some of the best insights
You may have “niched down” too much in your business, and by missing a broader scope you miss an opportunity to grow really big

When we ran interviews for the Cognopia Academy, I deliberately avoided interviewing our own customers. At the time we offered three courses, and I wanted to ensure I knew what to teach in the fourth course, so we could get the most customers possible. As such, it made sense to expand the scope.

When I ran interviews for Asia Startup Network’s “Pre-Founder Catalyst Bootcamp” we interviewed 5 non-students (more on how we recruit these below), plus 7 that took this course. This gave us broad coverage from those with experience of this course, plus wide coverage to see if there was demand for material that Asia Startup Network was not selling today.

If you choose to interview existing customers:

You MUST compensate them for their time
DO NOT make the compensation a freebie for your product or extra services – give them cash or vouchers, or a thoughtful gift
BE PREPARED to pay double or triple the compensation to interview churned or unhappy customers, as they will be harder to entice into your research

Interviews with competitor's customers

The easiest way to interview competitor’s customers is to look at deals you have recently lost. Go back to those customers and ask them if they’ll share their story.

Note – if you ran the sales process, you’d be better off asking a colleague or consultant to run these interviews, because the prospect might feel uncomfortable sharing the truth with their sales rep

If you cannot persuade prospects you lost deals with to talk to you, check out the section on Interview panels below

How do I get interviewees from Social Media?

When I first began my research, this was the channel I used. I had a broad following on Social Media and it was relatively easy to recruit and interview enough people by simply posting on LinkedIn and offering a $50 Amazon gift card for their time.

I was also lucky – the first interviews were for Business to Consumer products, and this is a relatively straightforward recruit. You find someone that has purchased something of interest, then interview them.

For Business to Business purchases, this channel is going to be much harder. This is because it is hard to find the real buyer in a business, vs the laundry list of people that have participated in a selection process.

For example, imagine a firm buying a new ERP platform.
This is a massive spend and probably has 10-20 people (or more) involved in the selection process.
You need to find the one person who had the first thought “Hey, things are broken here and we need to change” and was able to push this through their organisation to completion.

There is no harm in recruiting people you know, or people you’re connected to, however you need to ensure they go through the same rigorous selection process that you will use for paid interviews from Interview panels, otherwise you can end up with a lot of noise and no signal to base your research upon.

How do I use Interview Panels to recruit for Jobs to Be Done Interviews?

Interview panels like userinterviews.com and respondent.io have thousands of potential interviewees that are waiting to earn money by sharing their stories with researchers like you. This is good news, because:

You access a deep pool of potential interviewees in a very quick time
They do the work to find these interviewees and have a platform that makes scheduling your calls easy
The payments are all handled on their side, so you don’t have to buy and send Amazon gift cards yourself

Before you rush off and create a recruit, there are also some downsides to this:

Firstly, it’s much more expensive. These sites charge $35+ to recruit a B2C interviewee and $70+ to recruit an B2B interviewee before you have paid the incentive to the interviewee themselves
Second, because this is a source of money, you do get fraudulent interviewees and people that exaggerate their role in the purchase process (some maliciously, others innocently thinking they had more influence than they really did). These are a waste of your time and money, and can mislead your research
Because of these 2 issues, you need to create a really solid recruitment screener (a survey used to screen people you want to talk to from those you do not)

Fortunately for you, I’ve built a custom GPT for that.

How do I create a Jobs to Be Done Interview Screener survey?

The purpose of your screener is to sift those that actually drove the purchase from start to finish from those that did not. This may sound straightforward, but you need to balance reach (getting as many relevant respondents as possible to fill it in) with specificity (only interviewing people that are a genuine match).

Given you pay the platform to find each interviewee, and you pay the interviewee for their story, and you spend an hour talking to them, you must get this right.

If you want to skip straight to creating a survey – use this GPT to build your own.

How does a Jobs to Be Done Screener survey work?

Let’s use Respondent.io as an example of how to set us a Jobs to Be Done Interview screener. Here is the setup:

First, you need to get the Project Title right. The external project title is how Respondent markets your screener to their audience.

In this case I was trying to complete some research on why customers hired a Digital Transformation Consultant. From early interviews it was clear failing IT projects were one driver, so we expanded the scope of the research to deliberately target these people.

Note – we did not mention specific competitors or company names
Instead we let the respondent decide whether they were a match, to drive up the number of responses

The Project Details section gives a short panel to explain what your research is about. Again, do not share your actual objectives here, otherwise the potential interviewees can use this to tell you what they think you want to hear.

We have reiterated our desire to talk to people whose IT project has gone off-track
We have said we want to talk to “senior leaders” who brought someone to get it back on-track
We are clear this is a 60 minute interview, but bland and nondescript on how we will run the interview itself

Our objective here is to capture as many different people as possible, as the next phase (screener questions) will filter those we want to talk to from those we do not.

How do I setup the Respondent.io interview screener

There are a few key settings to ensure you get the audience you need:

This is all pretty self-explanatory:

Select your target audience – remember it costs more to interview B2B professionals, so only choose that if you absolutely have to
I would recommend doing these remotely – it’s easier to schedule the calls and you can record them using your Video Conferencing platform of choice
You need this to be one-on-one – the whole point is to get one person’s story, in depth, not a panel of opinions
For a complex B2B purchase you might need up to 90 minutes. For a simple B2C purchase, 45 minutes might do. I set this to 60 mins and if we need to overrun I can always offer a tip to the interviewee later.
The Incentive – both Respondent and UserInterviews have a suggested number. I have found this is a function of seniority:
- If I am talking to a C-Suite leader (as I may be in this case) $175-300 USD per hour is fair. Start low as you can always adjust upward if your recruit is struggling for responses
- If I am talking to “rank-and-file” people I could drop this as low as $50
- If you are running B2C research, start with $50 and work up if you need more responses

The goal here is for you to get as many responses as possible at the lowest possible cost and the highest possible quality.

You need to set the number of responses you need. In this case we had already completed a large part of this study, so I set this to 5. If I was launching this to begin with I would probably choose 10-12, unless I am running the same screener on UserInterviews (which can be a good idea, as you never know which platform will work best).

Our scope was BROAD – hence:

We did not mind which industry the responses came from
We were not bothered about job function – instead we wanted to look at the responses to see where the pain was highest
We only wanted to target those that had the ability to be able to make a decision – hence we used Vice President, Partner and Chief Officer as our Seniority choices

In this case we reiterated the need for “Chief X Officer” type profiles, but we were not bothered about the size of the company we targeted.

Note, in many of our research studies, Large and Small companies appear with the same Job to Be Done
The reasons the execs in these companies need help remains the same, the ability to pay varies
It can be useful to capture insights about “small fish” customers as these are typically under-served by the market today and may represent a large opportunity to grow

The skills didn’t matter for this research, and neither did the Location. We wanted to go as broad as possible and then filter out poorer candidates in a later step.

Finally, there are some optional settings that you can choose from, depending on your research.

In our case I felt the scope on Seniority and Job Title was good enough, these additional filters would just reduce the number of responses we might get. This is probably more relevant for specific B2C customer interviews, although I have never used these settings in that research, either.

How do I choose the right questions for my Jobs to Be Done interview screener?

Now you’ve got the base setup done, you need to put the right questions in. This is part art, part science. Remember, this customGPT can help you create a screener for your own project.

Q1 - Have you hired a consultant to help get a failing IT project back on track?

This may seem redundant, but about 40% of the responses failed this question. By filtering out those that had not hired a consultant we were able to reduce the amount of time spent reading useless responses.

Note you can use “skip logic” to send people around the screener and to make sure the question flow makes logical sense

Q2 - What was the most recent project where you had to bring in a new consultant or firm to recover a failing initiative?

For question 2, we are using a “multi-line text box” as our answer choice. Here’s why this question works:

We try to remind the respondent that this is the most recent project – this helps focus their mind and recall
We have reiterated the question above and the focus of the study (repetition is never a bad thing)
By providing a large text box, we invite longer answers and give them space to tell us things we have not asked for

This question style is great to capture their own voice and words.

Beware: since the rise of generative AI, many respondents use these tools to write their responses
- Fortunately, the recruitment platforms will often tell you when an answer has been copy/pasted into the box
- If not, read the response aloud and ask yourself “Does this sound how someone would speak?” – most AI responses are overly detailed and robotic, making it easy for you to spot

Q3 - When did you engage this recovery consultant?

The third question is a “radio select” option – where I am trying to understand how recently this purchase was made. The reason for this is that these stories rely on people’s memory – and the memory fades over time. As a general rule:

For a cheap, B2C purchase, you might want to talk to someone that has purchased in the past 1-3 months
If it is a B2B purchase that is of moderate value, 3-6 months is your sweet-spot
If this is a major purchase (B2C or B2B) then you can go out to a year – and even longer in some cases

You need to balance the timescale based on two things:

First, will the person accurately remember this purchase within the timeframe I am asking (see the bullets above), and;
Second, will they have had a chance to experience the product or service between making the purchase and joining our Jobs to Be Done Interviews?

The second point is why we selected “Within the last 6 months” and “Within the last year” as “Qualify” in our selection above. For a Digital Transformation Consultant “hire” we would need to give the buyer time to have completed the purchase AND experienced working with their consulting team. This is because we are able to interview them about why they bought the service AND whether the service worked or failed.

Q4 - Which consulting firm did you hire to recover the project?

The fourth question asks “Which consulting firm did you hire?”. Again, we are using the multi-line text box format here, so we capture as much information as possible:

We want the respondent to tell us, in their own words, who they selected
We may identify unknown competitors at this stage (e.g. in a research study on Enterprise Data Management Purchases, we found a high-priced competitor that my customer was totally unaware of)
We can use this information to “sanity check” future responses – to determine whether they really bought from this vendor or not (see Q8 and Q12 below)

Q5 - Who first suggested bringing in an external consultant to recover the project?

When running Jobs to Be Done Interviews, you absolutely must find the person that struggled with something in their organisation and pushed the firm to pay for something new. Usually, but not always, this is the person who first thought “things aren’t working as well as they used to” and then decided to go on a mission to fix them.

This is another multi-line text box – I have found when you put in options to choose from (e.g. “I was”, “My boss was” etc) then people are more likely to claim they had the first thought, whereas when you use a text box, you get more insight.

You are looking for the person to say something like “Me”, “I was” or “I thought we needed to fix X so I suggested that we do Y” in this response. If the respondent had agency in identifying and fixing the problem, they are likely to have felt the struggle and have a story to tell.

Q6 - What were the biggest struggles or red flags that made you realize the project was failing?

The best Jobs to Be Done Interviews are those where there is conflict, struggle and a problem to solve. You’re trying to identify the person in the firm who was the Hero on a Quest to fix their broken business. As such, ask about why they felt the need to change.

This is another multi-line text box, because we need to give them space to vent. Sometimes you get a few simple bullets here, other times you get detailed answers.

You’re looking for a balance – there must be some pain to pick into during the interview, and there needs to be enough in here to believe that the person filling this survey in was experiencing these issues. However if you get something “too perfect” that is written in the third-person or sounds like an MBA case study, it was probably written by AI and you should pass and find another participant for the interview.

Q7 - Who was the hardest person to convince that hiring a recovery consultant was necessary?

This is another “money” question. The answer you get in this multi-line text box should tell you:

Who has the authority to block the purchase for your product/service
How much power and authority does this survey respondent have in their business (compare the answer in this box to their job title in their profile and ask “does this match up?”)
How big was the struggle?
- Sometimes this could be “no-one” because they had the ability to choose under their budget – you’ve got to judge if this matches their position and company
- Other times they could say “everyone was on board with this decision” – this can be a red flag, as the people that didn’t have to fight for a budget probably don’t know how hard it was to unlock. Probe these answers further
- The most common answer is “the CFO” or some flavour of this – the CFO always wants to buy the cheapest thing, or defer the purchase, unless it’s a tool that benefits their own office

Q8 - What was the scope of the recovery consulting engagement?

This links back to Q4 and onward to Q12. We need to know:

Does the respondent to this survey know the scope of work delivered?
Can they articulate the work done to a level that is believable for someone hiring?
Is this the sort of work we believe a consultant like {answer from Q4} would deliver?
Does this scope, sold by {answer from Q4} consultancy, match the budget we will ask them to tell us in Q12?

Answers here can be brief – sometimes people will bristle at being asked the same things multiple times (which is good, it shows you’re getting a response from a human and not from AI). Beware if they list out a large scope of work that you don’t think could be delivered by the consultant they say they selected, or could be delivered for the budget they list in Q12.

Q9 - Which other firms did you consider before selecting your recovery consultant?

This builds on the answer to Question 4. If someone tells me they appointed McKinsey for their consultant, then lists a bunch of Mom-and-Pop shops as their competitive set, red flags will be raised.

It also allows us to build a broader understanding of the competitors that exist in your market.

ALWAYS Google these firms, unless you’ve already heard of them. Make sure they have a real website and a genuine presence in the market. Sometimes scammers will even set up fake websites – so be vigilant and look out for “lorem ipsum” text on these pages (this is boilerplate text that go into page templates, and tells you the page is not finished).

Q10 - Why did you reject the other firms?

Yet another multi-line text box, again, giving space for the respondent to tell us more about their selection process. You’ll find the people that advised on a selection (but didn’t drive it) struggle to answer this. They might use “Price” as the main variable – because everyone assumes the price is the most important criteria when buying (note – this is not always the case).

This gives you insight into whether the person has a clear picture of the purchase criteria and can state why the winning vendor won.

I wouldn’t base my interview/don’t interview decision purely on this question, you need to review the whole answer set and get a feel of whether the response is genuine or not.

Q11 - Who in your organization had the final say on hiring the consultant?

This is another “money” question – it strikes to the heard of how the decision was really made. If you use our custom GPT it may create 4 or more answer choices here, specifically designed to throw the respondent “off the scent” about who we are aiming to interview.

You can also use a multi-line text box answer for this question, looking for “It was me”, or “I was” as the answer.

Note – it is also fine for the final say to be made by the boss, in some cases. In this case, we were targeting senior leadership who should have the decision making authority.

If you’re targeting someone more junior, use:

Often, when making big decisions, someone has to put their neck on the line to push for their chosen vendor. Who put their neck on the line for this purchase?

Even junior people have to “step up” at some point and push for the solution to a problem they face. They might not have the budget authority to purchase, but they do spend “political capital” by advocating for their chosen vendor, knowing that if the project fails, they might lose their job (or their internal credibility, which could be worse).

Q12 - Approximately how much did your organization spend on this recovery consulting engagement? (with currency, please)

This ties together the answer from Question 4 (who did you hire) and Question 8 (what was the scope) into the “How much did it cost?” question.

You can use this to learn about pricing from competitors, if you’re totally new to a market
Or, you can use it to validate pricing and qualify out people that are claiming to have purchased from a leading vendor for a knock-down price

For example, if someone tells me they bought from Deloitte, and the scope was 3 consultants onsite for 3 months, but the budget is $10,000 USD, I know it’s bullshit.

Note – you need to ask for the currency here, otherwise people seem to just put anything in the box.

Some “gotchas”:

Some people say “I cannot disclose this” – which is fine – but if that’s the case, how good will their interview be? Pass.
Some put in a day rate rather than a total figure – this is OK, provided it matches what you know about pricing from the vendor they chose
Non-profits and Charities can get a bit of a free pass on this question – they do get great deals from consultants looking to bolster their brand image, so don’t throw them out for having low prices

Q13 - Has the consultant completed the project yet?

This ties back to Question 3 – when did you engage this consultant? – we want to ensure we are interviewing people that have experienced the service so we can understand whether or not they got what they paid for (and if not, why not).

Note – I would let through interviewees that said “No” to this question (you can manually override the Disqualification) if I felt they had begun the project based on other answers. In a large scale transformation it is unlikely they could select a consultant and see a whole project through in 6-12 months – so we were flexible.

If you are running Jobs to Be Done Interviews for people that have purchased a Product, ask “Have you begun using {Product} yet?” instead of this question.

Q14 - Were you satisfied with the consultant’s recovery work?

Here is a “radio select” question where we accept every single answer. If you are running Jobs to Be Done Interviews, you absolutely want to talk to people that love their vendor AND those that hate their vendor.

The “Other” field can also be useful here – some people will tell you the project is not yet complete, others might tell you that there’s disagreement in their team.

Try and ensure you interview a balanced group (note – this is why interviewing your own existing customers is not always sufficient to get a full understanding, unless you interview those that dislike what you sold them).

Q15 - Are you comfortable joining a video call with your camera on for this interview?

This question is not 100% mandatory, however I find it best to have the person on camera when running Jobs to be Done interviews. Here are some of the reasons:

If you can see their body language, you’re better able to read emotions and work out when there’s an opportunity to “go deep” into an answer
This helps you weed out fraudsters – one guy I interviewed had a picture of an old, white dude on his profile on Respondent when I ended up interviewing a young man of a completely different race. I still have no idea why he turned the camera on (or why he didn’t use his real identity) – but I flagged this for fraud and got my money back
We are aiming to record these to use for this site – showing how to run interviews – and therefore it is better to have the person on camera

You can make your own mind up whether you need this question or not.

Q16 - Our conversation may be recorded for research and training purposes. Do you consent to this recording being shared publicly or privately?

Unless you are running Jobs to Be Done Interviews to use for a client, or you’re intending to post them online (as we are) this question is redundant.

I do not use this to screen interviewees (even though it disqualifies those who say “No” or “Other”). If I am trying to fill a recruit, I don’t mind if they object to it being shared publicly, however if we cannot record this for Private use it is a problem, as we will need the recording to get the best analysis possible.

How can I reduce the number of fraudulent responses for Jobs to Be Done Interviews?

Unfortunately, fraud is a problem on these platforms, even though both Respondent and UserInterviews work hard to remove bad profiles. I would suggest the following tactics:

Check out the Profile of the Respondent:
- Do they have their LinkedIn profile listed?
- Have they stated their Job Title and Company?
- If you Google their name and company, do you get a hit (either on the company website or a LinkedIn profile)?
- Have they got a profile photo showing, and if so, does it match the one on LinkedIn? (most people re-use professional headshots)
- Has the platform verified the user with their work email?
- If available, have they completed other projects on this platform before? If so, how many?
Consider the answers to your screener in the whole, but feel free to eliminate people based on one single answer
- Many of the questions above are designed to be tricky to fool when asked in combination
- Ensure you break each question into its own page (or put a subset of questions on one page) if you’re using UserInterviews (respondent serves them one-by-one as standard) so the person cannot see all the questions they’ll be asked in one go
- Be prepared to eliminate responses from people that claim to have bought from a top competitor or who have a story you’re really keen to hear IF their answers fail to stand up to scrutiny
Opt for “Double Screening”:
- This is the ability to message respondents and ask them further questions about their answers in a chat-like message
- Respondent offers this as standard, UserInterviews makes you pay extra
- Probe into the answers they have provided to better understand whether they had the “struggling moment” or not (see below):

For this screener, I got some really tempting answers:

The consulting engagement was to fix a problem with the exact platform we were investigating
The consulting options they selected and the competitive set were the firms we expected
The person responding said that she had put her neck on the line to get this purchase

However:

The first person to suggest searching for this solution was the COO, and this lady was a Program Manager

As such, I used the Double Screening method to ensure I got the right person for the Jobs to Be Done Interview:

As you can see from these responses, the picture becomes clearer:

The COO was the person that had the first thought, and also acted as the key decision maker
The COO went out to bat, driving the need for the external consultants, spearheading the selection, and securing executive buy-in
The respondent on the platform was likely asked to select vendors – she probably wrote the RFP, ran the selection process, and possibly recommended a vendor to choose
But the struggle was felt by the COO – and therefore it’s their story to tell, not hers

You can get information from interviewing the “wrong” person – perhaps you want to learn about the way an RFP is put together or the process people use to create a long or short list of vendors. If that’s the case, feel free to interview people like this. HOWEVER, DO NOT include these in your Jobs to Be Done Interview analysis – they did not have the struggle, and therefore the insights you get will not benefit your research study.

What Questions do I use for Jobs to Be Done Interviews?

As noted above, this is not like a structured interview for a candidate you’re hiring for a job. This should be free-flowing, and it should lean into the frustration, excitement, passion and emotion that your interviewees express. Learn how to engage and unpack the story, by flowing around the Jobs to be Done Interview timeline and ensuring you capture the full story.

Before we begin:

The best book to read to learn how to run these interviews is “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss. He’s an ex-FBI hostage negotiator, and whilst the book has a really aggressive title, it is the best text I know to teach people how to really listen to what another person is saying. Grab a copy and read it cover-to-cover, then compare his recommendations to some of the techniques I share below.

How do I start a Jobs to Be Done Interview?

You have three main objectives when starting the interview:

First, you want to put the interviewee at ease. You tell them this is early stage research (less pressure).
- By lowering the pressure, you make sure the interviewees are relaxed and open
Second, you want to misdirect them. You tell them that your focus is about the language they use
- By focusing on the language, you reassure them this is just their story, in their own words, and they can’t get anything wrong
Finally, you give them a metaphor. Tell them this is like a Netflix series where you’re shooting their episode – so some questions might be weird (like “who was in the room with you and what was the energy like?”), and you’ll be the one asking daft questions
- Some people smile at this, some wince, but most drop their guard to a degree, which lets you in

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

After I have run this intro, I then bridge into the interview itself. The setup is complete, now it is time to move into their story.

Important: always remember this is their story in their own words.

Your objective is to get as much of that story as possible in 60 minutes, in as great a depth as possible. Just because you’re “handing the reins over” to the interviewee doesn’t mean they are running the show. You’re paying (in time and/or money) for this interview, so drive it and own the pacing.

To ensure I am “on track” I use the Timeline of Progress template to track where there are gaps in the story, and to land the information in the right chronological order (you will “jump around in time” as you interview, but always remember you need the whole story by the time the hour is up).

Here is the follow on example from my introduction above – Victoria first introduces herself in the context of the job she is doing today. However this is not what her story is about, so I need to dig backwards and understand what her context was when she hired the Organisation Design Consultant that this interview is really about.

Regardless of what they tell you about their own story and context, you’ll need to do a few things once you’ve captured this information:

First, you want to play it back to them, to show you’re listening
- You do this by paraphrasing what you’ve heard, letting them correct any errors you drop in
Next, you want to ask deeper questions – make sure you have a complete picture of their role, company, and situation
- Dig deep – ask clarifying questions to explore more about their situation.
- You’ll need this info at a later stage to understand how the decision is made, and to see if there are different tradeoffs depending on role/company size/context etc
Your main objectives here are twofold:
1. To ensure you have all the information you need to understand the rest of the story, and;
2. To ensure they feel like you care about their situation and you’re interested in them as a person

By this stage you want to have developed enough rapport to build the interview upon. Don’t worry if they’re still a bit “clammed up” – I’ll show you how to deal with difficult interviewees below.

How to bridge from who they are to what they purchased in a Jobs to be Done Interview

You have captured the basic context about the person – who they are, what they do, who they work for, how long they’ve been working there, and the overall situation in which this story takes place. Now it’s time to move onto what they bought. Here’s a quick video showing me dig into this with an interviewee that wants to tell me why he bought, when I need to know what he bought (AI Strategy Consulting):

The first part of the timeline I fill in is almost always the Decision Point – what they bought, for how much, from whom, and for who in their firm to use.

The reason to capture this first is that this is what they think the interview is all about. Laser in on the details and see what they remember.

Be aware that what they remember to begin with will possibly shift as the story moves on. It’s not uncommon to “wake up” a few more details later. Don’t worry about that – get the basics down to begin with.

How to discuss money in a Jobs to Be Done Interview

Money can be a tricky topic to talk about. Depending on your cultural background and your experience in your own role, you might be embarrassed or a bit scared to ask how much someone spent on a product or service. It can feel intrusive or insensitive.

DO NOT WORRY. The interviewee can always give you an approximate answer – most won’t remember the exact dollar amount anyway – but you do need to get some ballpark figure.

Face it head on. Here are my top two tactics:

Repeat back what they bought, like you’ve played back other aspects of their story (e.g. their role or job details), and casually ask “If I was playing your role and purchasing this, how much would I be spending on a service like this?”
- This defuses the question from one about how much they spent, to a hypothetical question about how much I should budget for this sort of service
Regardless of how much they say it costs, ask “This is going to be one of many silly questions I ask, but, Is that a lot of money?”
- FYI this is never a silly question – what you think “a lot of money” means will be very different to what another person thinks it means

Here’s an example video where I am interviewing someone that’s bought Entrepreneurship Training. Bear in mind the rest of my interviewees spent between $0 (Government grant paid) to $1,000 on their course.

Getting the "first thought" from a Jobs to Be Done Interview

After understand what the person bought, when they bought it, and what it cost, we now head up to the top of the Timeline of Progress. This is the “first thought” the person had that their life had changed and there was a need to do something different,

Making the transition is relatively easy – at least to write – all you do is ask:

When did you, or someone else in your firm, first think there was an opportunity or a problem that you needed to solve? What caused you to start shopping in the first place?

Easy to say, however I’d be lying if I said the answer you get to this will be the answer you’re looking for. Most people will land you *somewhere* near the first thought, but it usually takes a bit of digging to get back to the right detail. This is because people are not used to thinking this through – ask yourself, what triggered your most recent expensive purchase? I bet you have to think quite hard, and you probably need help to dig back all the way.

The first video below is relatively clean – and short – to get to the first thought:

So that first effort was quite quick to get to the first thought. Sometimes it’s a little more complex – you want to ensure you’re getting the right thought.

As you watch the clip below, start capturing the answers Prask gives and the details he’s providing and the events that are happening. I like to capture a few of the key events around the thought, as much detail about their context at the time as possible, and then frame the “First thought” as a question. Here’s the video:

As a recap, here’s what we have unpacked so far:

First, we have set up the interview so the interviewee feels comfortable to share their story with us
Next, we have understood their context – who they are, who they work for, what’s going on around the time they make the purchase
Then, we have detailed what they bought – at a sufficient level that we can refer back to this as we progress through the interview
Finally, we have understood the first thought that has triggered their purchase journey in the first place

These have bookended our story, so now we need to fill in the details.

How to Fill out the Timeline of Progress during a Jobs-to-Be-Done Interview

In truth, there’s no “one right method” to complete your timeline. Most interviews will “jump around” from one spot to another as you learn more about the product they purchased and the process they went through to buy it.

Here are a few key tips:

Fill in the Timeline of Progress template as you interview someone – even if it is just simple annotations – next to the point in the timeline you are talking about
- This allows you to quickly look at your template and immediately see gaps in the timeline to explore
Look for things that don’t make sense – as these tend to indicate a need for more information:
- Is the timeline being described realistic given the organisation size, person’s role, and dollar amount being invested?
- Do the dates make sense or is their timeline all over the place?
Have you captured critical events that trigger the person to move from e.g. Passive to Active looking? Could you explain why they moved from phase to phase?
- Note: sometimes people propel quickly through the timeline and one event moves them straight from first thought to active looking
- Always pressure them to find out what triggered a move from phase to phase, as these are marketing and sales process opportunities to target in future

The interview below is a relatively long video (9 minutes) and takes us further into the timeline for Julien, as he builds out the selection set for his AI Strategy engagement:

Beyond the digging, you also need a process to ensure the whole timeline has been completed. Check out the video below to see how I map this out (using a Remarkable Paper Pro tablet).

Note: I used to use A3 paper – the choice of technology is less relevant than ensuring you have 100% of their story captured and can explain how they progressed from first thought to purchase.

Capture the detail showing how they made the decision

You also need to unpack the decision process itself – what happens that takes us through the phases, and why is the decision made when it is made?

The interview below is with Marcus – and he talks through the end stages of the Timeline of Progress. Listen in as he finishes “Active looking” (in this case, via an RFP) and moves into the Deciding and Buying phase:

Listen for 3 Different Motivations during JTBD Switch Interviews

Not everything in this guide is a specific technique or style of interview question. To perfect analysing a JTBD Switch interview you also need to learn to listen for different types of motivation that cause people to progress through the timeline. Here are the three types of motivation that propel people forward:

Functional Motivation
- This is the easiest to listen for – what are they “hiring” the product or service to do for them?
- For example, when I am thirsty I get a drink – the functional motivation is to quench my thirst
Emotional Motivation
- This is more subtle – I need to listen past the things the interviewee is asking the product to do, and understand how it makes them feel
- In our video below, you can hear this when Prask uses those exact words – he talks about how his situation makes him feel and then hires a consultant to help make that feeling go away
- For example, I might feel frustrated and angry in my marriage, and decide to hire a marriage counsellor to help my wife and I feel happier together
Social Motivation
- Finally, and most subtle, are the social motivations – how does the interviewee want to be perceived by others?
- In the video example below, Sara talks about a desire to work with a small number of happy customers – her social motivation is to be seen as a great business to work with, both for her customers and for her employees
- Another example would be buying high-status items, like a Lamborghini – sure, it functions to drive you from A to B, and I’m sure it feels exciting to drive one, but a main benefit for men my age is how it makes them look to others

Check out the video below and then go and watch our other videos to see if you can hear these three motivating forces in action in our example interviews.

Using the "Netflix Documentary" analogy During Jobs-to-Be-Done Interviews

In the setup of the interview you heard me introduce the Netflix Documentary analogy as a way to get people to open up more.

The way to do this is to wait until there are key moments in the interview, like:

Someone talks about an important meeting where the problem or solution was discussed
An interviewee talks about noticing a problem in their workplace
The interviewee gets stuck trying to explain an important point, or recall a time, place or date
You want to dig in deeper and understand the emotional or social motivations behind a purchase

In each case, I pull out the “Netflix moment”:

“Imagine I’m shooting the scene…. who’s in the room, what’s the energy like etc?”
“Imagine I’m your understudy and I need to play you. How am I acting, what am I saying, and what is the reaction like?”
“OK, here’s my Netflix moment – I’ve got the camera out, what’s happening and who is in this scene?”

This analogy taps their memory and causes them to expand on the situation, context and challenge of getting the decision made.

Check out the video below for more examples of this in practice:

Using Contrast to Create Meaning in Jobs-to-Be-Done Interviews

To truly understand the words that interviewees use, we need to use the Contrast technique. This is most powerful when people use “weasel words” or ambiguous numbers.

These come in when an interviewee describes a situation that they know inside out, but you are unaware of. Things like:

“We were growing really fast…”
- How fast? Is this doubling in size or is this adding 3 more headcount?
“We chose that provider because we trusted them…”
- How do I cause trust? No one knows the answer – so ask what was less trustworthy about the options they rejected.
“It made sense to do it properly the first time, not sort of do a bunch of iterations…”
- What is “doing it properly” – what would be an example of not doing it properly?

If you hear this kind of phrase, try asking another question and “bracketing” the answer choices:

Is this more like growing 10x or 2x?
Is it more like trusting your grandma or trusting a used car salesman?
Is doing it properly making no mistakes, or is it just taking more time to complete the task?

The idea here is NOT to try and guess the right answer, it’s to trigger the interviewee to open up and explain what they mean. Check out the video below to see some real examples:

Additional Techniques for Jobs-to-Be-Done Interviews

Across these interviews, we have:

Built rapport
Understood the context behind the story
Completed the Timeline of Progress to move us from first thought through to the buying moment

Hopefully you’ve seen a few of the techniques that we use in Jobs-to-Be-Done interviews from these videos. Here are some additional techniques that will help you unpack the story, and ensure you get to the real, underlying reasons why people buy:

A full-length B2C Jobs-to-Be-Done interview example - buying an Entrepreneurship Training Course from Insead

Hopefully these tips have helped you understand how the Jobs-to-Be-Done interview process works, and how to document the insights you capture.

Rather than simply cutting more individual techniques into videos, here is a full-length B2C JTBD Interview to analyse. As you watch this:

Ask yourself – which techniques is Neil using to unpack the answers from Pranav?
As you listen to the answers, fill in a 4-forces template with the Pushes, Pulls, Anxieties and Habits you hear
Listen out for Functional, Social, and Emotional motivations that cause Pranav to move through the process

At the end of the video I walk through my own notes and findings that I took immediately after the interview. Compare them to your own – knowing this is not about perfection, it’s about capturing the essence of the story and the critical Pushes and Pulls that drive Pranav’s progress.

A full-length B2B Jobs-to-Be-Done interview example - Appointing a Digital Transformation Consultant

The next video shows a B2B JTBD Switch Interview, so you can see how to apply these techniques in a B2B setting. Some key points:

The techniques for the interview are exactly the same – as is the way you capture the Four Forces
The biggest difference is the setup – we need to understand now only the person, but also the company they work for, the industry they are in, and what is happening both in their personal context and in the broader business context

In this interview, Karen has really struggled. When you think of B2B sales, often people assume there is less emotion, because “it’s a business buying from another business”. As you listen to Karen speak, ask yourself whether this is true or not.

At the end of the interview I walk through my notes, and I also show how we have used the interview insights to make direct copy changes on a Landing Page:

Karen was one of 4 interviewees in our research that had the same job – dealing with an incumbent vendor for a Digital Transformation and realising it was harder than they thought
We used this to target the job for the company https://implementary.tech – and you can see on that Landing Page how the exact words Karen (and others with this Job) used to describe their struggle

Get a blank forces of progress template ready and try to fill in your own analysis whilst you watch – then compare against my analysis at the end.

Identifying poor candidates for B2B Jobs-to-Be-Done research

Compared with B2C JTBD research, B2B recruits are MUCH harder:

There are usually many people involved in a decision – most of whom will not give you the insights you need
If you include poor interviews in your research, you’ll pollute your results with inaccurate insights
Most importantly, those that DID NOT have the real struggle will not be able to tell you HOW they got others to buy in, or the tradeoffs they had to make to get a purchase across the line

In the video below I give you:

The details from the Recruitment screener which told me Jonathan was NOT the right person to talk to
A full-length JTBD interview where I push to understand his role in the purchase (the techniques used are still good to learn from, even though the insights he shares are no use)
A debrief at the end explaining how you can identify these poor interviews through the process of listening to Jonathan – which words and phrases give it away that he wasn’t in charge of this decision?

Watch the video and ask yourself whether you could identify this as a “dud” interview:

Final Thoughts about JTBD Interviews

The best way to learn how to interview using these techniques is simply: try.

Find a friend or co-worker who has recently purchased something valuable (think a car or a fancy watch, not a pack of gum). Ask if they’d be OK for you to try a new technique you’re working on – most people will be glad to help.

The more you practice, the better you get at listening. The better you get at listening, the easier it will be for you to hear the underlying story in your next interview.

Note: if you record interviews, watch them back at 1.5 or 2x speed – as this helps you tune your brain to “listen faster”

One thing I have found from all the interviews I’ve delivered is that people seem to enjoy being listened to.

Most conversations we have are just people waiting for their turn to speak
By listening, playing back what you’ve heard, and genuinely trying to understand their story in their words, you’re doing your interviewees a favour
Many will thank you for giving them a chance to unload the story – not realising they’ve given you valuable competitive intelligence that you can use to grow your business

Do you need help to run Jobs-to-Be-Done Interviews?

If you’re a founder or Product leader, you may not have the time or be willing to put the effort in to develop this skill in-house. If that’s the case, we can help.

Get in touch at hello@growth.exposed if you want to learn more or if you need help to apply these concepts yourself.

If you want a Jobs-to-Be-Done project delivered for your own firm, we can help. Click here, tell us more about your firm, and we can set up time to talk to help you unlock “Jobs” insights in your firm.